PROLOGUE

In the pro­logue of “At the Earth­’s Core,” the nar­ra­tor intro­duces his tale with a pre­lude of dis­be­lief, recount­ing an inter­ac­tion with a Fel­low of the Roy­al Geo­log­i­cal Soci­ety in Lon­don, where his expe­ri­ences and sto­ry met pro­found skep­ti­cism. The nar­ra­tor vivid­ly describes the dis­missal and increduli­ty he faced, which led to dashed hopes of recog­ni­tion and hon­or with­in the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty. Despite the cold recep­tion, the nar­ra­tor insists on the truth of his account, under­pinned by the sin­cer­i­ty and earnest­ness wit­nessed in his infor­mant, whose sto­ry is so extra­or­di­nary yet com­pelling that it com­mands belief. This infor­mant, dis­cov­ered unex­pect­ed­ly at the Sahara Desert’s edge, brought back a crea­ture from an inner world, offer­ing tan­gi­ble proof of his incred­i­ble jour­ney.

While hunt­ing lion in the Sahara with a group of desert dwellers, the only white man in the par­ty, the nar­ra­tor encoun­ters a man beside a goat-skin tent in an oasis, sur­round­ed by date palms and near an Arab encamp­ment. The stranger, elat­ed at the sight of anoth­er white man, imme­di­ate­ly inquires about the cur­rent year, reveal­ing his long iso­la­tion and antic­i­pa­tion. This meet­ing sets the stage for a nar­ra­tive that chal­lenges the bound­ary between the cred­i­ble and the incred­i­ble, between known sci­ence and the realms of unfath­omable truth. The pro­logue, with its empha­sis on the dra­mat­ic col­li­sion between con­ven­tion­al sci­en­tif­ic wis­dom and the fan­tas­ti­cal truth of per­son­al expe­ri­ence, promis­es a sto­ry that tran­scends ordi­nary belief through the sheer force of its extra­or­di­nary evi­dence and the con­vic­tion of its teller.